Ableton users can you explain your workflow

[diezdiazgiant]

Hmm.. thats not actually how i do it, though is deserves further investigation. It my work better than my current system but do you not get cpu spikes as the new track is added?

no spikes. no audio dropouts. i just have a folder of songs as channels and thier core parts as clips on said channel. this also works on grouped channels.
one of the things i didnt like about ableton was the inability to toggle between gate play and trigger.
this method raises 2 potential solutions to said problem:
1. make 2 channels for a song and group them - both have the same clips but ones default launch is trigger and the other is gate.
2. for breaks and sparse shit - make third channel to group in, make it a midi channel, and chop the shit out of the songs breaks into midi clips set to trigger; if you want to jam on some one shot samples before dropping the clip - simply arm the track and jam on those samples.


negatives about this setup - uses alot of hard drive space. also theres organization - i havent gone full scale yet so i am unsure if i want to organize it by bpm or treat it like an itunes style folder hierarchy.

[CerebralExcretion]

Its not just the HD space its the time investment i still only have a fraction of my tracks fully warped and hotecued, i would just rather play than spend that much time setting it all up.

Im actualy working on using abletons lopper with my bass / soft synths to capture loops on the fly and playing with that, i was getting so sick of setting up tracks. Im having so much fun with this now I havent rebuilt my main rig since it destroyed its self last month =)

[diezdiazgiant]

i dont know maybe its nothing but conceit but i feel like the time invested is no different than a guitarist or any other instrumentalist putting in the time to practice. sure when youre doing the boring leg work, to the observer, it seems like nothing of meaning is occurring but eventually all this tedious work is going to give you the understanding of your craft to just fucking get down. feelings of accomplishment come from doing shit other people wouldnt consider doing.

but im drunk already and probably being way too heady

[rdej47]

" Default
i dont know maybe its nothing but conceit but i feel like the time invested is no different than a guitarist or any other instrumentalist putting in the time to practice. sure when youre doing the boring leg work, to the observer, it seems like nothing of meaning is occurring but eventually all this tedious work is going to give you the understanding of your craft to just fucking get down. feelings of accomplishment come from doing shit other people wouldnt consider doing.

but im drunk already and probably being way too heady"

Funny I was just thinking about this idea today and the belief that digital DJ's or ableton djs don't do anywork. I say now a digital DJ almost does more work then a traditional vinyl DJ. We go through the ropes of setting up grid, finding great spots for looping, cue jumping. Especially ableton where you really have to go through the work of warping your tracks properly to make sure everything goes smoothly. I know a lot of people think that all a digital DJ does is just press play and looks cool, but behind the show there is 5x as much time spent putting it together so it goes right.

[diezdiazgiant]

its not more or less work its just different work

[BentoSan]

I am personally strongly considering building a file browser in max msp for Ableton, im not too sure if there is a live object api for loading a file into a specified empty clip though - ill look into that

Ill probably end up building a file browser for the m4l ms pinky patch

[BestLegsinHD]

i really hate having itunes open to browse through my music. people always question that.

[rdej47]

I was wondering how does ableton go about saving clips and tracks.

With Traktor your loops are stored within the mp3. So if I start using the same tracks in ableton will that mess things up?

Also I'm now strongly considering picking up an APC40. I want to be able to trigger loops with the APC40. Is it possible to set up individual clips as loops that will playback till you shut them off?

Sorry for all the questions on ableton lately, i'm just finally starting to wrap my head around it and all the possibilities.

[Bassline Brine]

One thing that's related to this thread that I was looking at, is this video:
[youtube]X5-idJJ5Y4E[/youtube]

I know the Lemur is at one hell of a pricepoint. But that looks pretty damned amazing to me.

[JuanSOLO]

Periodically I will warp a ton of tracks, mainly my staple breaks favorites etc. I could play a 6 hour or more set of songs I've warped over time. Now days I warp them as I listen and decide I like a track. Once the are warped, some tracks get chopped up as if they were my cue points etc. I usually prep a Live set with tons of Audio and only play a fraction of it. I treat my live set like a crate of record that I brought to a gig.

However my sets in recent past consisted of 3 tracks for full songs with loops set up here and there, a track for breaks, and a track running Ms Pinky with a connected turntable, APC40, and LPK25. I use a reverb, a delay, BeatLookUp and the Finger, on sends, and I have an identical AudioFX rack on each track that has EQ, Filter, bit crushy stuff etc. It's gotten fairly simple and I have a lot of fun.

ALTHOUGH, the new Ms Pinky M4L patch has proven to be much better.
I am in the process of going back to 2 turntables running 2 instances of Pinky, and 2 Audio Tracks. My sends, Audio FX racks, and controllers will remain the same.

I've gone from 15 to 8 to 4 tracks and now I feel happy about it and have a lot of fun, and it feels like my sets are cohesive.

I recommend watching some Tom Cozm stuff to get some ideas on what can be done. s4racen has some great ideas too, and Bento is heavy on getting some killer functionality out of Pinky and M4L.

It's an exciting time to be in Ableton as a DJ.